Forever
by Nighshade
Summary: After a mission goes horribly wrong, Sara is left to hold the team together and mend over the broken pieces. But who is going to help mend the broken pieces of her soul?
1. Prologue

**Rip**

"Rip!" the anguish in her voice cuts through the hailstorm of bullets and artillery shells. "Please. You can't…You can't leave us. Leave me."

It's hard, one of the hardest things I've done, to muster the strength to raise my hands to her golden hair. I look away from the dirty imprint of my blood soaked palm on her beautiful locks to lose myself in the blue of her eyes. "I will always be with you," I manage to get out, right before the last bit of strength deserts my frame and the darkness finally manages to swallow me whole.


	2. Chapter 1

**Sara**

"Rip! Rip!" I scream his name into his face, trying to force life back into his unseeing eyes. "You can't die, damn you. You can't die!" I'm crying, I know from the little teardrops falling onto his blood stained face. But I can't feel it. I can't feel anything but the blackness rising from inside me threatening to destroy any and all in its path.

The rushing tide in my ears finally morphs into comprehensible syllables. Someone's yelling my name. "Sara!" Stein's voice on the comms. "You need to get back on the ship. We can't take any more hits!"

The ship. Waverider. The mission. Our team. _My_ team now. Truly mine. Not like when he was taken, not like when he left. We're orphans now. No captain at our helm. No time master to let us know of the world shattering consequence of breaking this or that silly rule.

He's lighter in my arms than I would have expected. Bullets rip the air all around. Why they miss us, I don't know. I don't care. Rip Hunter is dead, bullets can't hurt him now. And me, well. I should care. I have a team to lead, to save.

Waverider's door splits the sky, opening at our approach. I walk passed the shell-shocked faces of the team, Rip still in my arms. Deafening silence is my reward as Gideon closes the door and takes out the hell out of dodge without even needing to be asked.

My breaths echo loud in my own ears. I make my way to the med bay. Ray is the one closest to my heels, but he's not fast enough. The infirmary door latches close behind us, barely missing his nose.

"Sara-"

"Cut off sound, Gideon. Black out the screens too while you're at it."

"Yes, Captain."

I lay him down on the bed. He looks peaceful there -if I could ignore his still open, lightless eyes. I can't bring myself to close them. I'd had to admit to it. Kill out that voice inside me that says maybe there's some hope, any hope, that he would come back.

"Fix him, Gideon. Please. Please."

"I…I can't. Sara, I can't."

Who knew a disembodied voice could convey that much pain. But she loved him too. "He's dead. He's dead Gideon. He's dead and it's all my fault."

"Now the Sara Lance I knew wouldn't waste time wallowing around in self-pity."

Ice douses my being. I dare not move, not even a muscle. I must be going mad. That's it. All that strain must have finally gotten to me. How can I hear his voice, Rip's voice, when he's clearly laying there lifeless in front of me?

"No, you're not going mad," he says. "You're really hearing Rip Hunter's voice."

"But it's not really him," his voice dissolves into that of Gideon. "It's a memory file. I can.. I can run a subroutine that sounds like him, acts like him, thinks like him. I'm sorry Sara I shouldn't have. I just…can't accept he's gone. Forever."

 _Forever._ "Can yo-" I have to clear my throat before I can get the next words out "Project him out as well?"

"You mean like this?" Rip Hunter says, standing right over his own dead body, hair immaculate, long coat swishing in the air, hands nonchalantly in his pocket, wound free, blood free, death free.

"Gideon, can you lock him to my neural signature?"

"Want to keep me all for yourself Miss Lance?" he asks, his head cocked, one eyebrow raised. "Or are you afraid the others will cast doubt on how 'healthy' what you two are doing is."

"Only you can see him, Captain."

"Good. Open the doors, Gideon."


	3. Chapter 2

**Sara**

"Captain."

"Coming!" I yell out of the study doors and immediately slam the back shot.

Rip wastes no time to let me have it. "Sara, you can't just walk into the lion's den with no plan whatsoever, and expect to walk off unscathed!"

"Do you have a better idea?"

He has that calculating look in his eyes I know so well. "Maybe."

I arch a brow at him. "I'm listening."

* * *

"And who's brilliant plan was this?" Mick's exasperated roar cuts through the hellfire storm.

"Mine I suppose," I mutter, and duck back behind the crates.

Mick finishes up another roasting round that doesn't seem to put so much as a dent in the enemy ranks. "You _suppose_? And I supposed you were our damn captain! Get us out of this mess."

"What else do you think I'm trying to do?" My eyes drop to Rip's gun in my hands. I never did like guns. Give a blad and close quarter combat anytime. Where is the ghost of Captain Rip Bloody Hunter when you need to smack him in the head for his goddamned plan.

"What did you say?" Firestorm asks.

Did I say that out loud? "Nothing. New plan. I distract. you run. Get that thing to ship, you hear me? At all costs."

* * *

I limp into the library, trying not to wince with every step I take. "Do we have it?"

"We do indeed," says Nate, visibly trying to rein in his excitement. "Code of Hammurabi. The power to bring into existence whatever law you desired."

"Could you undo death with it?" I blurt before I can stop myself. "I mean, could you write death out of existence?"

"You could…in theory."

The surprise is all too evident in his tone, in the sharp rise of his brows. He doesn't know what to make of my words. None of them know. Do they guess? Do they wonder?

"But it won't undue what's come before," I muse. "Only set new laws."

"Yes. The code will make a world where no one will die. Ever."

"Imagine that."

"Imagine the chaos!" Exclaims Ray. "The whole world will implode in on itself if we just suddenly decided to do away with death willy-nilly."

"Why are we even talking about it?" Professor Stein cuts in, affronted, casting his shocked eyes over to me. "Of course we're not using the code to do any such thing!"

"Of course not," I reply, feeling even more bone weary than before. "Lock it up for now. We'll decide what to do with later."

"Some plan you had going for us. Why did I ever listen to-"

"So it's my fault now, is it? And pray tell, what part of _my_ plan involved chasing after some brunette because she batted her lashes."

"What was I suppose to do? Leave her to die?"

"Turned out she didn't need saving now did she? Almost stole the code right from under your nose."

"How was-"

"Sara?" Amaya's voice is like a bucket of ice cold water dousing the fire raging through my veins. "Who are you talking to?"

"No one." I get out, drying my sweaty palms on my even sweatier tank top. "Just arguing with my self."

"We won Sara. You shouldn't beat yourself up about-"

I start backtracking towards the nearest door. "Yeah I know I know. Just tired is all. I should just go soak my bones for a while."

"Sara-"

"See you tomorrow!" I throw back over my shoulder, almost running.

"You need to be more careful Miss Lance." Rips quips, jogging beside me. "Keeping me bottled up like your own personal Jinni, questions are bound to arise."

"Shut up." My tone might be grouchy, but it's hard to keep the grin from breaking out on my lips.

"You know what? Next time, you're coming with me on missions."

"And how you propose we do that?"

"Gideon?" I ask as the door to my room latches close behind me.

"I could implant a cortical simulator in your brain and download captain hunter's memory file into it," the AI responds.

"I'd strongly advise against that," Rip says, unease coating his words.

"Good thing I'm taking a break from taking your advice then," I shoot back, getting out of my stinking clothes.

"And now you're desorbing. Sara, I really must object."

"What do you care? You're dead, remember." I don't know why I can't keep the tinge of accusation out of my voice. Not like it's his fault he died. That was all me.

He senses it too. The familiar look of cold anger is back squarely on his face. "Well. I'll take myself off then, if it's all the same with you. I'd trust you'll summon me the minute you're in need of something."

I shrug, taking off the last piece of clothing. "Suit yourself."


	4. Chapter 3

**The Ghost of Captain Hunter**

It looks as it always did, my hand. I open it, close it. Nondescript. Rather thin, long, calloused fingers. Feels as real to me as when I was a man of flesh and bones, not a hallucination - a memory file left behind in one of my stupider moments.

"You regret backing up your mind, Captain." Gideon's voice breaks in.

A sigh escapes my lips. There's no point hiding anything from my ship's all knowing AI. "I'm worried. For her. I'm always worried for her." I massage my temples, trying to chase away an ache that has no right being there. Gideon's simulators are way, way too good. "Worried for her when I was alive, worry for her when I'm dead."

Even in death, I can't keep still. Restless, I pace the length of the library, my fingers drumming on my legs. "I was supposed to be a disembodied voice of reason, a backup they could go to before deciding to do something too insanely time-shattering, keep them, keep her, from being too reckless. I never thought…never imagined…"

"That you'd become a ghost, Captain?"

Her voice is gentle, but it can't compensate for the bitter truth of that word. I cease my pacing with a sardonic chuckle. "The Ghost of Captain Hunter. Wish that was the only thing I had to worry about."

My gaze drifts to the code of Hammurabi, lying innocently on the library writing desk. The door swishes open and my real source of worry steps in, towel-drying her wet hair, her white shirt sticking more than usual to her shower damp skin - rather becomingly.

"Glad you finally decided to join us," I say dryly.

"It's not going anywhere, is it? And some of us have bodies and bruises and aches and pain to deal with."

"It's not it going anywhere I'm exactly worried about."

"Oh no?" she says with a sarcastic lift of her brow.

"What was all that? Undoing death itself? It's not like you Sara to think of using dangerous objects for personal gain."

"Geez it was just a hypothetical question," she says, throwing up her hands in apparent exasperation." I was curious is all. You've not improved in the hand-wringing department Rip. Not even in death."

"Touche." I start my restless pacing anew. "We need to come up with a plan, Sara."

"How hard can it be to destroy this thing?"

I gauge the "Get me a hammer and let me have at it" look on her face, trying to decide how best to put it. "That's precisely it. We cannot, must not, destroy it."

* * *

"Why the hell not?" Exclaims Mr. Rory, echoing Sara's own words a few of hours before when I told her the Code could not, and should not, be destroyed.

Sara gives me a dirty look. What the others think she's looking at, I do not know. It took me hours to convince her why we had to find another way other than outright destruction. Hopefully, the rest of the team will be more receptive to the idea.

"We can't risk undoing whatever laws the code has already established." Sara without much enthusiasm. "What if the laws of physics simply ceased to exists, what if time travel suddenly became impossible?" she parrots out my words to the team.

"I can't imagine a bunch of laws written 4000 years ago could possibly have anything to do with laws of physics." Dr. Palmer muses. "And anyway wasn't it supposed to be mostly justice system stuff? An eye for an eye, that kind of thing."

"Yes, but that's only the surface part. These laws were inscribed over a forgotten artifact of an ancient alien civilization the Time Masters called the Elder Race. How it found its way into the Babylonians hands, I don't know. What I do know, is that whatever law you write into this thing goes into immediate effect. And those who invented this tech, had it for a very long time."

"So basically superpowers, the Multiverse, hell, the four dimensions, and who knows what else...the whole cosmos probably rests on the back of _this thing_."

"Yes, that is what I was led to understand."

"Led to understand?" Professor Stein jumps in. "Not to be crude Sara, but how have you figured out all of this?"

"Um.." Sara's eyes roam over to me.

"You could just tell them, you know," I respond calmly, knowing she won't.

"Gideon helped me," Sara says.

"I did?" Gideon says. "I mean yes, of course, I did Captain. You're welcome"

"Why are you covering for her?" I ask my ship, not expecting a response.

"But mostly by going through some of Rip's old notes on the Code," Sara adds to the team.

"Oh," Nate says. "He knew about the code?"

"Was there anything Captain Hunter didn't know about?" Jefferson asks with a subdued chuckle.

"A thing or two," Amaya says, her gaze fixed on Sara, with an unreadable look in her eyes.

"anyway," Sara says. "We need to first find a way to hook up the code to Gideon's main processor. Maybe she can figure out if there are any laws set into that stone we absolutely cannot break. Martin, Ray, see what you can do."

"On it," They respond in unison. It

"In the meantime," she goes on. "Nate, Amaya, you comb through archives and pull together any mention you can find of The Elder Race. Maybe if we could understand them better we'd know what to do with the Code."

"Sure thing," says Nate. "Maybe we should start with Captain Hunter's notebook you used."

"Um…" she blurts out with another of her panicked look over at me. Well, with what passes for a panicked look when it comes to Sara Lance, league of assassins alum, always ready with a knife up her sleeve to hack away at any problem that has the audacity to get in her way.

"Oh for Goodness sake Sara-"

She completely ignores me. "No need. I've already combed through every inch of it." Without wasting another moment she turns away from our resident historian. "Mick, Jefferson, you're up."

Mr. Rory stuffs the remains of his sandwich into his mouth. "We going somewhere?"

"Yes. The Vanishing Point."


End file.
